This invention is a bag having a gusset made of a sheet of flaccid material adapted to overlap on itself forming a gusset and opposing sidewalls joined together at their edges so that it may be loaded with merchandise from a side rather than the top or bottom of the bag. A side loadable bag made from paper is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,504,841, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. However, this prior art bag does not provide for a handle portion, formed partly from a gusset and partly from the overlapping side walls, protruding from one of the joined together side edges as does the present invention.
Prior art side loadable bags are generally made of a plurality of parts (especially if a handle is desired) rather than from a single sheet of flaccid material as is the case with the present invention. Conventional machinery used in making plastic bags, such as that used to make the bags disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,539,705 and 4,730,943, may be modified to make the bags of the present invention, which in turn can be used in automatic, as well as hand loading operations.